It is getting warm,

The sun is up once again,

Summer is coming.

Macklemore - Wings:

We want what we can't have, commodity makes us want it
So expensive, damn, I just got to flaunt it
Got to show 'em, so exclusive, this that new shit
A hundred dollars for a pair of shoes I would never hoop in
Look at me, look at me, I'm a cool kid
I'm an individual, yeah, but I'm part of a movement
My movement told me be a consumer and I consumed it
They told me to just do it, I listened to what that swoosh said
Look at what that swoosh did See it consumed my thoughts
Are you stupid, don't crease 'em, just leave 'em in that box
Strangled by these laces, laces I can barely talk
That's my air bubble and I'm lost if it pops
We are what we wear, we wear what we are
But see I look inside the mirror and think Phil Knight tricked us all
Will I stand for change or stay in my box
These Nikes help me define me, but I'm trying to take mine off.

("http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/macklemore/wing.html")

These lyrics are from Macklemore's song "Wings". The song is about a boy, who wants to be good at basketball and tries to achieve that by buying cool shoes. The meaning of the song is that we are trying to define ourselves by following other people around us. In the music video, Macklemore is reading the lyrics from a book to little kids. This shows that the song is trying to send a message teaching people to be themselves and not blindly follow others. If you build yourself on what you wear, that's all you are, and without them, you are lost. The tone in the song is sad and rhythmical which makes it meaningful. The lyrics follow mostly a rhyme scheme AA, BB, CC... but at some parts ABAB. This chore has 8 stanzas that each has 2 lines. These lyrics works as a poem, because it follows the same rhythm, has stanzas and ending rhymes. The lines doesn't have same amount of syllables, but it is fixed by singing faster and slower and keeping small breaks.

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

– William Blake (extract from Auguries of Innocence)

I chose it because a lot of the other poems I read were negative and depressing, which I don't like. I like how this poem is positive and describes freedom as a key to happiness. It tells how you need to be free and not stressed to see the world's true beauty.

Veeti Heikkinen

25.4.2016

English

Jennifer Guarino

Creative Project Reflection

For my creative project, I drew a drawing. In the drawing, Kellyanne is in a wheelchair, going up a hill. There is also two invisible characters, and their shadows, that represents Pobby and Dingan. I drew this drawing with pencils, so it is black and white. I didn’t use any colors, because I think that black and white is more meaningful and it fits the scene, which is a little sad. Also colors might have made the drawing less professional.

The hill in the drawing, represents the difficulties that Kellyanne has. She is going up the hill in a wheelchair. This shows how hard it is for Kellyanne to go through those challenges by herself. Kellyanne has her hand resting on the wheelchair, so she isn’t pushing the wheelchair forward herself.

There is also dark shadow behind Kellyanne, and it gets lighter when you go up the hill. On top of the hill, there is no shadow, only light. this also represents how Kellyanne is going away from the shadow towards the light. What the light represents, is for the audience to figure out.

Behind Kellyanne there are two characters. You can not see the characters, but you can see two lighter parts in the drawing behind Kellyanne. There are also shadows of those two characters behind the shadow of Kellyanne and her wheelchair. Other one of the characters is pushing the wheelchair that Kellyanne is in. The idea of this is to show that even if you can’t see those characters, they are still helping Kellyanne. That way they actually are real, even if you can’t see them, which is the main idea of the book Pobby and Dingan.

I did this drawing for my final project, because I thought it was a good way to show my understanding of the book. I did it as a drawing, because I like drawing, but I am really bad at it. This was a good way to practise my drawing. I had to do a lot of practising before I did my last draft, and I can really see how my drawing improved from the start to the final draft.

While I was drawing Kellyanne and her wheelchair, I had to do a lot of very detailed drawing. Drawing the hill, shadow and Pobby and Dingan was not detailed drawing, but it was also hard and time consuming. I had to draw the same spots over and over again, and to make sure that I don’t draw too hard. I think that My strongest part of the project is the idea. The drawing doesn’t look really professional. The hardest part was drawing Kellyanne’s face, and I think that it is the weakest part in my project. Also people that haven't seen or read Pobby and Dingan, can still understand my drawing.

I have drawn Kellyanne and her face many times. I have tried to draw different kind of faces and emotions to her. I won't try to make her look real, but I don't want her to look like a stick figure. I still need to draw my final draft on a bigger piece of paper, which might take a few tries.

I will draw pobby and Dingan for my creative project. I won't draw them as people, but I will draw them as some kind of force that protects Kellyanne. I'm not yet exactly sure that how I will make Pobby and Dingan noticeable. I'm also not a good drawer, so I will probably have to make many drafts before my actual drawing. I will try to draw my final draft with a black in pen, or a pencil, so it's going to be black and white. I hope that I will learn drawing from this project, and also portraying my ideas into drawing.

The quote: "The secret of an opal's color lies not in its substance but in its absence." means that opal is so valuable because it is a symbol of hope and dreams. People have dreams that could be achieved by finding opal, and that gives them hope to keep on searching for it, even though they might have never found it yet. Hope and dreams are the "fuel" of humans that we need everyday to get out of bed. For the characters in the novel, opal was also a symbol of hope and dreams. But everyone has their own dreams, and for everyone the opal has a different meaning. For Ashmole it showed that believing is the most important thing. The opal showed Ashmole how dreams could be achieved by believing that they will happen. Ashmole wanted Kellyanne to get better and his dad to win the trial. The opal helped Ashmole to believe and hope that they will happpen. The opal is an important thing in the novel, because it was the only thing that gave the characters hope. I think that the different colors in the opal represented different dreams that people had. And the absence means that they only exist when you don't have them. If you got everything you ever wanted, you wouldn't have any dreams, and that would take the living out of your life. Living is having dreams and going after them and trying to achieve them, not the achieving itself.

Book vs. movie

In the book, Ashmole didn't get the opal back like he did in the movie. Also Sid started yelling and threatening Rex in the book, but not in the movie. Also Kellyanne died in the book. The movie didn't tell that part, but the movie neither said that Kellyanne turned out okay.

Pobby and Dingan quiz answers

2. When Ashmole was going to look for Pobby and Dingan at the mines, he wasn't really sure if he believes that Pobby and Dingan are real. On his way there, Ashmole thinks how amazing it is that the place was once on the bottom of the ocean: "If this amazing thing was true it was just possible Pobby and Dingan were true too." Ashmole thinks. This is important moment for the story, because that is when Ashmole starts to believe that Pobby and Dingan were real, and really search for them. He realizes that even if he hasn't seen something himself, it might still be true, just like Pobby and Dingan.

5. This story duscusses the importance of dreaming and believing. It shows how those things gives us hope. Ashmole finds Pobby and Dingan not only because he believed they are real, but because believing in them gave Ashmole hope to keep on looking. He believed that if he finds them, Kellyanne will also get better. Also Ashmole's father Rex had big dreams that he will find opal and then have a much better life. These dreams gave Rex hope to keep on looking and mining for opal. Even that he had never found opal, he had hope to give him energy to look for them.